


Luck

by Mordinette



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Banter, F/M, Mass Effect 2 timeline, Pining, Pre-Relationship, Romance, Shakarian - Freeform, Trapped, Tumblr Prompts, to relationship, yet another take on how that 'reach and flexibility' talk happened
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-12
Updated: 2019-11-13
Packaged: 2021-01-29 16:30:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21413215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mordinette/pseuds/Mordinette
Summary: Zaeed getting Shepard and Garrus trapped in a house on a second mission to kill Vido Santiago might have been an annoyance at first, but as it turns out, it was actually a blessing in disguise.
Relationships: Female Shepard/Garrus Vakarian
Comments: 45
Kudos: 142





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Celticmaenad on Tumblr sent me an ask with these 5 possible prompts:
> 
> “Have you lost your damn mind!?”   
“Looks like we’ll be trapped for a while…”   
“This is without a doubt the stupidest plan you’ve ever had. Of course I’m in.”   
“I’ve seen the way you look at me when you think I don’t notice.”   
“Hey, have you seen the..? Oh.”
> 
> At first, I was going to pick one of these, but then I thought, why not make my life harder and combine all five into one fill? And then, this happened. :D
> 
> Big thanks to the wonderful Suilven for beta reading.

She should have known it was going to be a clusterfuck. After all, most things involving Zaeed Massani were.

Yet, when Liara came through and sent along an intriguing piece of information about Vido Santiago, Shepard did not hesitate to go down to the old mercenary’s lair and lay out her—granted, rather outlandish—plan to finally catch up with the bastard they’d been forced to let slip away.

“Did you know that Santiago has a mistress he’s been meeting with in some secret location for the last four years?” she asked as she marched through the door, raising her voice to be heard over the racket of the trash compactor by the wall.

Zaeed shrugged, his attention still firmly on the video feed as the machine crushed a pile of non-recyclable refuse and hurled it through the chute, setting it off on its never-ending journey through space. “Son of a bitch has always had a woman for each arm. What’s your point?”

“My point,” Shepard said as she made a turn for the table on her left and took four long strides to walk over to it, “is that now, we not only know who this mystery lover is, but also where and _when_ they’re going to meet next. As an added bonus, only a few of Santiago’s trusted men accompany him on these little trips of his. So, should we decide to pay him a visit of our own, there will be no personal army to deal with.”

Zaeed finally tore his gaze away from the screen, his mismatched eyes glinting harshly as they focused on Shepard’s face. “I’m listening.”

Shepard smiled. “I thought you might.” She folded her arms in front of her chest and sank down on one hip, leaning her back against the table’s edge. “Her name is Alissa Roberts. She’s the wife of an arms dealer Santiago has had some business with a few times, and precisely one week from today, she’s going to take a charter flight to Bekenstein with the excuse of visiting an ailing friend. She’ll arrive at a hotel in Milgrom with her turian bodyguard, check in, then, come night, she’ll quietly slip out and move on to a luxury cabin on a small island in the middle of Lake Harroon—which happens to be owned by an anonymous trust, which, in turn, happens to be owned by a certain Bryce Pinkerton.”

Zaeed’s jaw muscles twitched. “That’s one of Vido’s old aliases.”

Shepard nodded, her lips curling into a smug smirk. She did love a good strategy, and at the time, she thought the one she’d cooked up for this was rather ingenious. “So, here’s the plan. Santiago has eyes and ears everywhere, and he’s been especially paranoid since our encounter on Zorya, so we can’t exactly take the _Normandy_ to Boltzmann. Instead, I’ll lease a small ship from the Citadel, then you, Thane, Garrus, and myself will hop over to Bekenstein and land at a small settlement on the outskirts of Milgrom. Any of Vido’s spies see your ugly mug, the mission’s blown, so you’ll stay on the ship until everything’s a go and we can pick you up. The rest of us will get a skycar, go to the hotel, plant our butts there, and wait.

“Once Roberts and her bodyguard arrive, we’ll incapacitate them. Thane stays behind to make sure our guests won’t leave or alert anyone. I’ll take Alissa’s clothes and identity, Garrus takes the bodyguard’s armor, and once it’s nightfall, we pick up the skycar Santiago leased for his mistress to get her to their little love nest. By this time, it’s gonna be dark enough for you to leave the ship. We’ll pick you up somewhere, but we’ll still have to play it safe, so you’ll have to hide in the back seat of the car. As far as we know, the cabin has some interesting security features, but once we’ve dealt with those, you can come out and we’ll set up a warm welcoming party for our friends.”

Her plan laid out in all its glorious detail, Shepard waited for Zaeed’s reaction.

If there was one thing she had learnt about Zaeed in the scant few months she’d known him—besides his obvious skills with a rifle and his extraordinary talent of staying alive despite all those dire situations he constantly got himself involved in—it was that nothing ever seemed to surprise him.

Yet, now, something remarkable happened: for a moment or two, all he could do was stare at her, utterly speechless, before he found his voice and finally reacted to her genius proposal.

“This is without a doubt the stupidest plan you’ve ever had,” he said. Shepard raised a brow, but before she could object, Zaeed cut her off. “Of course I’m in.”

Shepard’s almost-frown melted into a grin. “All right. Glad to hear it. Then the plan’s a go.” Her job done, she pushed away from the table and headed for the door. “We’ll get him this time.”

“We’d better,” Zaeed’s voice drifted after her as she stepped out into the hallway and made her way to the elevator.

It was time to discuss the details with the rest of the team.

* * *

For a while, everything went well, which, in hindsight, should have been a reliable indication that things were soon going to go sideways.

With Alissa and her bodyguard in Thane’s expert care, Shepard and Garrus commandeered the skycar Vido had rented for his lover, picked up Zaeed in a dark alleyway, and set out over the lake.

The cabin was quite a way off, shrouded in a misty fog that had settled down during the night—a perfect place to hide an affair you wanted nobody, and especially not the husband, to know about.

They set the car down on a small landing pad in the front and watched as two rows of lights came alive, illuminating a path to the building. It certainly made for an appealing entry—though, in Zaeed’s case, a rather risky one as well.

“Stay here,” Shepard hissed as she reached behind her to grab her weapons and armor packed in Alissa’s overnight bag. Pointedly not looking at the back seat and the dark figure crouching on the floor between the seats, she popped the door open and climbed out of the car. “We’ll let you know when everything’s clear.”

Zaeed’s reply was an annoyed grunt, but he did stay put while Shepard and Garrus made their way to the front door.

The lock didn’t pose much of a problem. Liara’s information extended to the password Santiago had provided his mistress with, and it was simply a matter of inputting the code then replaying Alissa’s captured voice to satisfy the second layer of security. The lock turned green, the bolts released with a click, and the door opened, the house inviting its late-night visitors in.

As befitting the role of a bodyguard, Garrus walked in first. The lights, warm and subdued, came on as he moved through the space, checking for “danger,” which, in their case, were in fact the various cameras scattered about the place.

“Counted five,” he murmured as Shepard followed behind him.

Shepard strolled over to the bar, picked up a glass from the counter, and poured herself two fingers’ width of whiskey she did not intend to drink. She lifted the glass to her lips in an imitation of a delicate sip, and, with eyes partly hidden by the bangs of the wig Kasumi had procured for her to look as close as possible to Santiago’s mistress, she scanned her surroundings.

“Six,” she said as she walked over to the couch and sat down.

Garrus stopped by the large window, seemingly to observe any movement outside. The glow of his omni-tool reflected off the glass, casting his face in an eerie, orange halo as he pulled up his hacking program to gain remote control of the surveillance system and interrupt any feed transmitted offsite.

“Almost there,” he said, his brow plates scrunching together as he stared at the code scrolling fast in front of his eyes.

And that was when the alarms blared to life.

* * *

“The fuck is that?” Zaeed’s voice, distorted and staticky, rumbled in Shepard’s ear as her communicator crackled with the interference from the electronics going haywire inside the house.

“A small problem,” she yelled over the noise. She sprang up from the couch, and ran to the next room in search of some kind of central monitoring station where she could maybe, possibly, turn the damn thing off.

Zaeed snarled. “Shit.”

Through the racket, Shepard could hear the skycar door click open as Zaeed got out, followed by the ominous noise of his heavy footsteps as he hurried down the path to the house.

“Stay in the damn car!” Shepard barked into her comm. “We can still salvage the situation as long as—”

Whatever it was she wanted to say, it got lost in a shotgun blast just outside the room’s window. The lights flickered for a moment, and then—there was silence.

Shepard’s hand froze over the lock on a side door she had hoped would lead to their salvation. “What the hell was that?”

Zaeed huffed. “I shot the damn alarm’s junction box.” 

Shepard took a deep breath, eyes squeezed shut, and opened her mouth to hurl a string of curses at Zaeed’s head when Garrus appeared in the doorway.

“Have you lost your damn mind?” he demanded, staring holes in the wall where, on the other side, Zaeed was supposedly standing. “You could have set off a cascade reaction. Worst case scenario, you triggered some kind of trap.”

“We don’t have time to screw around,” Zaeed said, frustration raising the volume of his voice. “Now Vido knows that something’s up. We have to track him down before he takes off.”

Shepard sighed. “All right. We do have an idea of where he could be. Didn’t want to risk getting into a fight with civilians around, but we’ll come up with something on the way. I’ll get my armor.”

She rushed back to the living room and opened the bag, picking out her chest piece first. She’d just started pulling off her dress and putting on her armor when Zaeed banged on the front door.

“Company’s coming,” he said. “Looks like Vido’s decided to investigate first.”

Shepard doubled the speed of her movements as she changed her outfit from cloth to metal. “How far out are they?”

“They’ll be here in a couple of minutes.”

“Okay. Get your ass inside. Now.”

“Then open the damn door,” Zaeed grunted.

Shepard and Garrus snapped their heads at the front entry at the same time. The lock was red.

Garrus darted to the door, his fingers flying furiously over the interface of his omni-tool as he attempted to hack into the controls and override the lockdown.

It didn’t work.

He growled, mandibles clamped tight to his face. “I told you blowing the junction box was a bad idea.”

Shepard heaved out a sigh and raked her fingers through her hair. She ran through a couple of ideas in her mind that might work, settled on one that made the most sense in the present situation, and tapped her comm. “Zaeed, get in cover,” she said. “Wait until they’ve opened the door, then, once they’re inside, we can put them in a pincer with Garrus and me at the front and you in the back.”

“All righ—” Zaeed started to say. Then, “Shit. They’re turning around.”

Shepard ran to the window at the front door. The moonlight caught on the dark shape of a boat in the distance, the only indication of its direction the wide-birth movement of the sidelights mounted on the bow.

It was definitely heading back to the city. What worried her more, though, was the sight of the old mercenary as he jogged down the still-lit path—straight to the skycar.

Her hands tightened into two frustrated fists. “The hell d’you think you’re doing?” she demanded, even though she knew perfectly well what that asshole was up to. He was going to take the car and leave her and Garrus behind.

“I’m not gonna let that bastard get away again,” Zaeed said as he opened the door and jumped in. “I’ll be back once he’s dead.”

Through the glass, she could hear the engine’s roar as the skycar lifted into the air, and then—it was gone.

Shepard shook her head, her chest rising as she took a deep inhale and blew it out slowly. “Great.”

Behind her, Garrus hummed in agreement, his eyes still fixed on the path beyond the door. The lights along the walkway dimmed, then died off in the motionless night, and the island covered itself in darkness once more.

Shepard turned away from the window and headed to the room she’d been trying to investigate when Zaeed blew the junction box—and the entire mission along with it. “Let’s see if we can find a control room and override the security lockdown.”

Garrus nodded and followed her as she entered the bedroom again.

* * *

Shepard’s hunch had been spot on. There _was_ a control room of sorts in the house, though it took some searching to find it. It lay behind a door disguised as a cleaning closet, the room not much bigger itself than the space it had been designed to emulate. 

Beyond a complicated-looking input panel and a central server for the system, it only contained a couple of monitors that displayed the images captured by the security cameras. Both screens seemed to be frozen. The first was split into a series of individual frames; the second, however, showcased only one zoomed-in picture: that of Shepard’s face, with her name printed in bold, red letters at the bottom.

“Huh,” Garrus said, shoulders hunched as he examined the monitor and its display. “Well, now we know why Vido and his men turned around and ran. I’m guessing they got the alert a little late about the person they’d be facing if they got here, and he didn’t want to risk being shot in the face by the infamous Commander Shepard.” He straightened up, his mandibles flicking out in a grin. “Can’t say I blame him. You can be pretty scary.”

Shepard raised a brow, the corners of her lips curling up. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m a sweetheart.”

Garrus’s mandibles flared out wider. “Right. My mistake.”

She gave him a wink, then turned her attention back to the input panel. “See if you can override the lockdown from here. I’ll message Thane and tell him to pick up a skycar and come get us. No reason for him to guard our guests anymore and I’m sure as hell not going to wait for Zaeed to show up.”

Garrus nodded and got to work, and Shepard tapped on her comm to raise Thane.

The call didn’t connect.

She walked out into the living room and tapped her skin behind her ear again. The result was the same.

“Figures.”

She rolled her eyes up at the ceiling, and trudged back to the control room.

“I hope you’re having better luck than me,” she said as she leaned against the door frame.

Garrus looked up. “Problem?”

“Yeah. I think long range radio is jammed.”

“Hm. Might have to do with the lockdown.” Mandibles pulled tight to his face and brow plates lowered in a frown, he turned back to the input panel. “I’m not having much success either. The entire system is frozen.” He tapped at the keyboard one last time, getting the same result as before, and straightened up with an annoyed grunt. “Looks like we’ll be trapped for a while. At least, until Zaeed gets back.”

_If_ he gets back, she thought, and saw the same unspoken words reflected in Garrus’s eyes. But, sadly, that was only one of their problems.

“We’ll be stuck here longer than that if we can’t even get out of this damn house,” she said.

Garrus scratched the back of his neck. “I can rip out some wires at the front door and try to do a manual override. If that doesn’t work, we _could_ just shoot out one of the windows.”

Shepard snorted, the corner of her lips pulling into a grimace. “With our luck, they’re probably bulletproof.” 

“A few shots with a high caliber weapon might still do the trick. But let’s just try the door first.” 

Shepard nodded, and moved away from the door to let him get out of the small room. “All right. Have at it.”

She watched as he strode across the living room, dropped down on one knee by the door, and pulled the small tool kit he always carried around with him out of a hidden compartment in his armor.

He removed a panel and reached in behind it, rooted around in the space between the inner and outer walls, and yanked a length of cable out. The cable threw off a few sparks as it landed on the floor, then fizzled out with a soft puff of smoke.

“This might take a while,” Garrus said. “But if I can get this door open, I’ll check out the junction box and see if I can stop the jamming signal, too.”

Shepard gave him a nod. “All right. I’m gonna go look around while you work on that.”

She turned around and set out on a snooping trip around the house.


	2. Chapter 2

When Shepard had said she’d take a look around, she was hoping she’d find something useful. Maybe another way to get out, or, at least, some information about the Blue Suns or other criminal organizations. What she found, instead, was the trappings of a comfortable life: two large bedrooms, richly furnished, with their own baths, a fully stocked kitchen and bar, and a large library of holo films. Everything to make for a relaxing vacation away from home.

_Vacation_. Such a foreign concept. It was something other people would have; she was glad if she got a few days’ worth of shore leave that didn’t end up with batarian pirates attacking the town she was in, turning her free time into yet another bloody battle to add to her war stories.

Her fingers slid along the spines of the holo films’ jackets. She hadn’t seen any of these. Hadn’t been to the movies in years, to be honest.

She picked out one and looked at the summary on the back. It was a romantic comedy about two clerks working in competing stores on the Citadel. Sounded sort of silly, but… if she and Garrus were really stuck here for the rest of the night… When would she get another chance to put her feet up and pretend the fate of the galaxy wasn’t resting on her shoulders—again?

She turned the jacket over and looked at the title. _The Long Shift. _Huh. That sounded familiar; she vaguely remembered a movie with a similar plot that had been popular on the Citadel a few years ago. Naturally, she hadn’t seen it, but she wondered if Garrus had.

Movie in hand, she walked out of the library and into the living room.

* * *

The first thing she noticed was the green glow on the door’s lock—apparently, Garrus had managed to reset the mechanism and, finally, opened the door.

The second was the lack of a bulky turian in the room.

He was probably outside, working on getting the radio signal back, and for a split, insane second, she wished he couldn’t.

As quickly as the thought came, she shook it off. They hadn’t come here to have fun. They were still on a mission; Thane needed to be notified, Zaeed needed to be found, and they needed to get going.

Still, even if they succeeded in contacting Thane, it would take a while for him to arrive, and in the meantime, she wouldn’t mind having that tiny bit of normalcy, even if for just a few minutes, and watch at least a little bit of the film.

Either way, she wanted to see how Garrus was getting on with the repairs, so she palmed the lock and opened the door, and walked out into the night.

She found him by the side of the house where Zaeed had blasted the junction box. He was buried waist-deep in a hole in the ground where the cables from the box entered the house, grunting as he tried to get to some part he couldn’t reach.

“Hey, Garrus,” Shepard said as she approached him, holding up the holo film’s jacket. “Have you seen _The_—”

The rest of the movie’s title froze in her throat when he pulled back from the hole and rose to his full height to look at her. “Oh,” she said with a soft gasp, her brain unable to produce a coherent sentence at the sight of his torso, his very, very _naked_ torso, in the dim light.

You didn’t survive N7 training, countless merc and pirate battles, not to mention the Collectors, without an extensive knowledge about alien physiology, but still, none of those experiences had prepared her for seeing her turian friend without his armor, let alone his undersuit.

Damn, he was beautiful.

Not in the traditional, human-centric way; he had no smooth lines, no curves, no soft skin. But the way the filtered light from the windows shone on his cowl, his keelbone, his plates, the silvery patches almost sparkling as they reflected the warm rays—alien or not, she couldn’t help comparing him to classical statues of Old Earth.

Her gaze slid down his torso, from his broad shoulders to his thin waist. She’d always been a risk taker, never shying away from trying something new, but when it came to romance and attraction, she’d never even considered that someone who was not human could be an option. Now, she wondered if she’d been wrong. Now, she wished she could reach out and touch him, feel his rough skin under her fingertips.

“What is it?” Garrus asked, knocking her out of her daze, and she cleared her throat, lifting the holo film’s jacket and turning it towards him.

“Uh, this movie. _The Long Shift_. I wondered if you’ve seen it.”

For a moment, he looked at her as though she’d lost her mind, but he took the cover from her and flipped it back and forth in his _large, taloned, very interesting-looking_… hand.

“Hm. I think I remember hearing about it back on the Citadel. It was pretty popular for a while, but I’ve never seen it. Why?”

Shepard took a deep breath. Suddenly, it all felt so stupid and selfish. Here he was, working his ass off to get them off this damned island, while she went looking at holo vids and wondering if they could watch one of them in damned Vigo Santiago’s house.

Still, there was no backing out now, so she rubbed the back of her neck and said, “I thought that, if we’re stuck here anyway, maybe we could watch it. Have a mini-shore leave, if you will.”

Garrus nodded, and he handed the video back to her. “Seems like we’ll have plenty of time for that. All the wires are fried and I can’t get the radio back online. I tried to dig down and find some undamaged cable to make the connection, but the soil is too hard and the hole I managed to make is too tight.”

“That why you took off your armor?”

Garrus shrugged. “Yeah. Then I took off my undersuit because I didn’t want to get it dirty. Or worse, get it torn.”

Shepard’s eyes flicked to the hole behind him. “Maybe I can give it a try.”

“Good luck with that.”

Shepard put the video on a large rock and, following Garrus’s example, started stripping. She pulled off her armor, then the top of her undersuit, and she glanced back at Garrus, wondering if he would have the same reaction to her body she’d had to his, but he wasn’t looking. He’d fired up his omni-tool and buried his nose in some readout on the screen, paying no attention to the human in her sports bra in front of him.

Disappointed, Shepard got on her hands and knees and poked her head down in the hole. She rooted around, trying to loosen the rocks and find a usable length of cable but, just like Garrus, she came up short.

“No go,” she said as she threw a glance over her shoulder at him, and just managed to catch Garrus staring at her behind before he quickly looked away.

Shepard’s lips stretched into a grin. _Hm. Interesting._

She got up, and beat the knees of her pants to shake the dirt off. “I guess we’ll just have to wait for Zaeed to come back. At least you’ve managed to open the door. Good job with that, by the way.”

“Thanks.”

“Well, let’s go clean up and have our little shore leave, shall we?”

Garrus smiled. “Sounds good.”

They collected their discarded armor and undersuit tops, and went back to the house.

* * *

_“I’ve seen the way you look at me when you think I don’t notice,”_ Robert from Helix Acquisitions said, his voice low and husky as he tipped his head and moved closer to Joanna, crowding her into the counter behind her.

Shepard bit into her lip, eyes wide and unblinking as Robert finally, _finally_, went in for The Kiss.

Joanna ducked down and stepped around her arch nemesis, giving him a not at all convincing laugh. _“As if.”_

Garrus scoffed. “This is stupid. If they both want it, why don’t they just say it and get on with it?”

Shepard paused the video so that she could properly glare at the turian sitting next to her on the couch.

“It’s not that simple,” she said, burying her own annoyance with Joanna’s disappointing stubbornness. “If she gives in now, he’ll have the upper hand. She has to know he’s sincere and not just playing with her.”

Garrus shook his head and rubbed his forehead. “_Humans_. They are obviously attracted to each other; there’s no reason to drag this out like that.”

Shepard sank further into the couch, arms crossed in front of her chest as she tilted her head and raised a brow. “Do turians just come right out and get to the point without any sweet talk? No romance? No chase? Just _‘let’s fuck’_ and that’s it?”

Garrus’s mandibles flickered in amusement. “Well, not that crudely, but basically, yeah.” Shepard grimaced, and he smiled, waving a hand in the air. “At least, when it comes to blowing off steam. Releasing tension. If it’s about something more serious, that could take more time.”

“Well, this could become a serious relationship, too,” Shepard argued, jabbing a finger at the holo projector’s screen. “I think they are in love, they just don’t know it yet.”

Garrus huffed. “They don’t even like the same things. They aren’t a good match. It’s just sexual tension, that’s all. All the more reason why they should just admit it and get it out of their system.”

Shepard rolled her eyes and turned the video back on. “You’re wrong, and I’m right. So just shut up and watch the movie.”

Garrus huffed out a laugh, and if he had any more complaints about the story, he didn’t voice them again.

* * *

Shepard woke up to the sound of the door sliding open.

“I can come back later if you need more time,” Zaeed said, his voice heavy with amused innuendo.

Shepard blinked, and rubbed her eyes as she took in her surroundings. She was still on the couch, next to Garrus—in fact, very close to Garrus, _snugglingly_ close, with her head on his shoulder and his arm around hers, the holo screen long since gone dark after they’d gone to sleep watching a third movie during the night.

“Good morning,” she said, smiling up at Garrus.

He looked at her and smiled back, and slowly, he removed his arm from behind her. “Good morning.”

Taking her time, Shepard stood, stretched, and turned towards Zaeed. “Vido?” she asked, stifling a yawn.

Zaeed grinned, his mismatched eyes sparkling with smug self-satisfaction. “Dealt with.”

“Let me guess. You’re the only one who made it out alive,” Garrus said as he bent down to pick the discarded pieces of his armor off the coffee table.

Zaeed’s grin widened, and he leaned back on one hip as he crossed his arms in front of his chest. “You know it.”

Despite her still simmering annoyance with the old merc, Shepard couldn’t help the small smile that crept up on her lips. Crazy or not, Zaeed certainly knew how to get things done. She gave him a nod, and set out to collect her own stuff around the house. “All right. Let’s get off this damn island, pick up Thane, and get back to the _Normandy_.”

* * *

Shepard couldn’t sleep.

That fact alone wasn’t entirely unusual; mission strategies, ways to deal with the Collectors, dark thoughts about her resurrection, all did a remarkably good job of keeping her awake some nights. What was different now was the object of her obsessive thoughts: she couldn’t get Garrus out of her mind.

Seeing him without his armor, in his half-naked glory, had awakened a part of her that she hadn’t even known was there. Had she been a closet xenophilic all this time?

She searched her brain, examined every encounter with an alien species, looking for any sign of attraction—and came up with nothing.

No, it was only with Garrus.

Thinking back now… she did like him from the start. His voice, his laugh, the way he carried himself, his sense of humor—not to mention his impressive skills, whether with tech or his guns—they all made for a very attractive package, indeed.

Yet, despite all her warm feelings towards her friend, the _only_ friend who’d follow her to hell and back no questions asked, it took seeing him out of his armor to make her realize that he was more than just a teammate; more than just an arm she could rely on.

He was a man. A _sexy, sexy_ man. Someone she wouldn’t mind waking up next to again.

Shepard let out a long, heavy sigh, punched her pillow in the guise of fluffing it up, and turned on her other side.

Maybe she was just lonely. Maybe it was just a need for physical intimacy. Heavens knew when she had last been touched in a romantic way, even without considering those two years she’d apparently spent dead, then half-dead, on a Cerberus surgical table.

Yes, that had to be it. It was just a sudden wave of _want_, nothing more. It would pass, and soon, she’d be able to look at Garrus without thinking about sex and love and romance, and everything would be back to normal again.

She hoped. She really, really hoped.

* * *

You can tell your mind to _stop thinking_, and you might even obey that order for a while, but when it comes to _dreams_, you have about as much control over those as passengers do over a runaway car without brakes.

And so it happened that, when Shepard finally went to sleep, her dreams were all about a certain turian with blue eyes.

One moment, they were sitting on the couch in her cabin, talking about mundane things, then she was suddenly in his lap, her hands pushing down the fabric of his tunic, exposing the silvery plates and soft leather-like skin underneath. He felt warm as she explored the geography of his body, fingertips skating along the edges of plateaus and crevices, lips caressing his neck, his mandibles, his mouth. Then, the scene changed again, and now she was on her back in her bed, clothes shed, legs spread wide as Garrus dipped his head between her thighs.

Her breathing turned shallow as his tongue found its target, stroking gently at first, then, as her body tensed, with more purpose. Her hands clutched at his fringe, eliciting a groan from him that reverberated through her core, and she came hard, her body spasming as he helped her along that wonderful, glorious wave.

And then, she woke.

Her heart hammering in her chest, she drew in a few gasping breaths as she opened her eyes and sat up, searching for Garrus in the dark.

Of course, he wasn’t there.

It had only been a dream. None of this was true.

Brutally disappointed, much more disappointed than she had any right to, she flopped back down on her pillow. Well. So much for forgetting about sex with Garrus.

_Damn_.

* * *

Shepard spent the next few weeks planning and conducting missions, compiling under-the-table reports for the Alliance, and pining over her turian friend.

Yet, it wasn’t until Garrus brought up one of his conquests from his past that she decided to finally, actually, do something about her situation.

After all, that was what turians did, wasn’t it? Stop beating around the bush and just come out with it? Wasn’t that what Garrus had said?

As she listened to his story, trying to push away the irrational jealousy rising in her gut at the mental images of him with that recon scout, she silently went over a dozen ways to approach the subject. Eventually, it was Garrus himself who provided the opening with his “reach and flexibility” line.

“So, uh,” she said when he finally stopped talking, “how about we test your reach and _my_ flexibility?”

She smiled, hoping her come-on didn’t sound too lame, and leaned against the metal railing by his workstation to give some support to her legs that had decided to turn to jelly as she waited for his reply.

Garrus’s mandibles flared into a loose grin. “Sparring?” he said as he tipped his head, his eyes twinkling in some strange expression Shepard couldn’t quite decipher. “Sure. I’d be up for that.”

Shepard’s brows pulled together in a frown. Was he being obtuse on purpose, or did it come naturally? Or, worse: was he just trying to let her down gently?

If that was the case, she could still back out now; she could say that yes, sparring was exactly what she’d been talking about. But… that would leave her with no real solution to her little problem, and more importantly, she’d never taken the easy road in anything, and she wasn’t going to start doing that now.

She took a deep breath and pushed away from the railing, straightening her spine in a—hopefully—clear presentation that she meant business, here.

“No, I meant the _other_, more… intimate version of, umm, releasing tension. In my quarters. Would you be up for _that_?”

Garrus’s grin widened, and he took the two steps separating them, stopping just inches away from her. The last time they’d been this close was when they fell asleep on the couch in Vido Santiago’s house—a scene Shepard had replayed in her mind countless times since then, that memory the only thing to keep her warm in her cold, lonely bed at night.

“Yes. Definitely,” he said, his voice dropping into a deep, rumbling purr that spread a flush of heat from her chest to her toes.

He bent his neck until their foreheads met, and she closed her eyes, her lips pulling into a smile. Luck was not something she’d had much of in her entire life, but this time, she was sure she was the luckiest woman alive.

* * *

Their first time was slow, careful, and just a little bit awkward. Their species weren’t really designed to fit together, after all; it took some exploration—some very, _very_ pleasant exploration—and a few false starts before they found a position and a rhythm that worked.

And boy, did it work. Despite all the differences in their physiology, Garrus’s reach certainly worked wonders—in more ways than one—, and if the groans that escaped his throat were any indication, the way Shepard molded around him, drawing him in and holding him tight, meeting each of his thrusts with her own, must have felt just as good to him as it did to her.

The second time was harder, faster, their touches more assured, more confident. By the third time, they knew each other’s tells, knew the spots that brought out a shiver, knew what elicited a gasp, and they made _excellent_ use of that knowledge.

Afterwards, boneless and the happiest she’d been since… well, since ever, Shepard curled into Garrus’s side. He pulled her close, gentle talons skating down her arm, and back up again as she lay her head on his shoulder and listened to the soft thrumming of his heart.

It was nice, lying like this, with him. Different cultures, incompatible DNA aside, it all made perfect sense. There was no one else in this entire galaxy she trusted more, cared for more, had more in common with than with Garrus. She must have been blind not to see this before.

And to think that it was all thanks to Zaeed. She hated to give credit to that old bastard after the stunt he’d pulled on Bekenstein, but she had to admit: Zaeed getting her and Garrus stuck in that house was the best thing he’d ever done.

The absolute best.


End file.
